Several PCs Still Waiting for Conficker Attack

According to the estimation of security firm Sophos, weeks after the outburst of the nasty Conficker worm which resulted into the creation of a massive botnet of around millions of hacked systems, several PCs are still going on unpatched.

Sophos's Endpoint Assessment Test indicates that 11% Internet users have still not installed MS08-067 patch which offers protection against the vulnerability abused by the Conficker worm. This was analyzed after the assessment since the beginning of 2009.

Security experts at Sophos believe that despite the robust publicity about Conficker, no improvement in the situation has been noticed so far.

Brett Myroff, CEO of regional Sophos distributor, Sophos South Africa, stated that they had expected the users to become wary of the potential Conficker threat and to go for the installation of the patch that was available in the market since October 2008, as reported by ITWeb on April 15, 2009. He further added that considering the reports of probable outcomes of not installing the patch onto the systems, it was really a worrying news.

It's quite terrible to see such large number of PCs going on without proper security updation. Consequently, it will be relatively easy task for Conficker to expand through these enormous numbers of unpatched systems and create nuisance.

Further, the scanning of PCs also revealed that around 5% systems are even presently infected with 1 of the 4 variants of the Conficker worm. However, this figure looks insignificant until and unless one acknowledges that this worm has infected large number (in millions) of PCs around the world.

It is thus recommended by Sophos that all businesses should strengthen their IT security by ensuring better assessment of patch vulnerability alongwith controlling the network access.

Finally, users should ensure that their PCS are updated with latest security software. The researchers has warned the users that in case they have not patched their PCs with the MS08-067 vulnerability patch, the threat from Conficker is still very much alive for them. So, they must provide the security of the patch to their systems, thereby evading the Conficker intrusion.